Читать книгу Blood & Dust - Jason Nahrung - Страница 10

There was a knock at the door and Meg answered it.

'Well, hello,' a male voice said, and Kevin's mother looked over from the pan and said, 'Sergeant, what is it?'

'Constable Smith told me your good news, so I had to come out and see for myself. Hope you don't mind.'

Hunter walked into Kevin's line of sight. A faint rash down one side of his face. New clothes, same scruffy coat. Same raggedy bullet-proof vest. Belt bulging with pouches, some kind of baton.

His mother twiddled with the stove and then moved to the kitchen entry. 'I was just cooking-'

The chair scraped a rude interruption as Kevin hauled himself to his feet, using the table for support. 'What the hell are you doing here, Hunter?'

The man held up a hand and Kevin stayed where he was. 'Calm down, sport. We're here to sort it all out.'

A woman in black walked in behind him. She wore an ankle-length skirt and a blouse under some kind of wide-shouldered, hooded Driza-Bone. Her hair was cropped close to the scalp, her face all angles, tight and hard, humourless, the mug shot of someone who'd blown up a bus. Her eyes glimmered green, like a cat's. Something about her reminded Kevin of Taipan.

Meg closed the door and walked over to hold his arm tight. He pulled her to him. This was not going to go well.

'My, quite the welcome home party we're having,' the woman said.

'My, um, supervisor,' Hunter told them. 'From Brisbane.'

The woman studied Kevin. 'Well, our star attraction's up and about. How do you feel, boy?'

'What's the story, Hunter?' Kevin demanded. 'What the hell happened? What happened to my dad?'

The woman glanced at Hunter when Kevin said his name, an eyebrow arched in inquiry, faintly amused or annoyed, he couldn't tell. Who wore a 'Bone out here in summer, anyway?

'Kevin,' his mother said. 'Stay calm, son.'

'He's fine,' Meg said. 'But the ambos are on their way from Charleville. I think he should be under observation or something.'

'Oh, definitely or something,' the woman said. 'In fact, I think he should come with us.'

'With you?' Kevin's mother said.

Meg tightened her grip on his arm. 'He hasn't done anything.'

'He is a material witness to the death of a policeman,' the woman said.

'And my dad,' Kevin added.

'And your father.'

Kevin pointed at Hunter. 'This bloke knows more about it than me. He brought that biker to the servo. He left us to die in there.'

'That's not what happened, sport.'

'Don't sport me. I saw what you did to that bloke's arm. I saw-'

'Oh, Reece,' the woman said, reaching inside her coat.

'Wait,' Hunter said. 'Mira.'

Mira gave him the look of a school teacher being told bullshit about homework not done, then walked toward Kevin's mother. She picked up a photograph of Kevin in his cricket whites, leg streaked with red from his bowling stint that netted his first five-for. 'You must be very proud to have such a fit son.'

'Very proud.'

'I like you, little mother.' She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. 'You smell of strength. Not here.' She squeezed his mother's bicep. 'Here.' A hand on her chest, dark-coloured nails glinting. His mother stood, as straight as a crowbar. 'Strength and anger. A little bit of fear, too, I think. The smells of the peasant, leavened with dirt and sunshine.' Mira's hand slid down, over his mother's stomach.

Kevin held Meg closer. He could smell his own sweat. Realised that the sausages were starting to burn, the sizzling growing louder. His pulse reverberated in his ears. Meg radiated heat beside him; a trick of his hearing made it sound as if he could hear her racing heartbeat, too, feel it thudding against him where their bodies pressed together. He could see only Mira: her face so close to his mother's cheek, the crown of her head reaching only to his mother's nose; that hand, spread wide as though to sense a baby's kick.

'Stop it,' he said, but she ignored him, lost in some kind of reverie.

'I, too, was a peasant once,' Mira said. 'So, dirt and sunshine, I understand, though I have left them far, far behind. But I do like to taste them sometimes. It is good to be reminded of where we come from, don't you think? Of our heritage. Of the blood in our veins.'

'I don't know what you people want. Sergeant, what do you people want?' his mother asked, shuffling away from Mira.

'Yes, sergeant, tell these good citizens: what is it we want?'

'We just need to talk to your son, Mrs Matheson.'

'Mrs Matheson? It was Diana this afternoon.'

Mira looked at Hunter, amused. 'The night changes everything, does it not?'

'Mira!'

'They know you, Hunter, and now they know me.'

'We know nothin',' Kevin said.

'Oh, but I think you do, boy; because you don't look very well at all.'

'I'm all right.'

'You have no idea what you are.' Mira cocked her head, listening. 'Is that the Night Riders I hear? Do you hear them, Hunter? Coming to clean up their loose ends.'

'Not necessary, Strigoi. These people-'

'The boy is officially dead-'

'The constable knows he isn't. And who else by now? You can't make the whole town go away.'

A frown. 'No, I suppose not.'

'Cut our losses, Strigoi. Take the Rogue and go.'

'I was thinking, cut and run.' A finger nail drew a thin line of blood down Kevin's mother's cheek. She tried to pull away, but Mira held her firmly by the upper arm.

The smoke alarm sounded. Mira, flinching, told Hunter to take care of the pan. Smoke spiralled over the stove as Hunter stepped toward the kitchen.

'Run, Meg, run!' Kevin pushed her out of the way and charged.

Mira shoved his mother. She smacked into the table and tumbled to the floor. He lashed out but Mira side-stepped his clumsy, distracted punch and her stiff arm slammed into his chest like a cricket bat. His feet flew out from under him and he hit the floor so hard his vision turned black, lit by fireworks. When he could see again, the woman had him pinned under her boot, the chunky heel grinding into his diaphragm, the evil snout of a pistol pointed directly at his face.

Hunter helped his mother up. Meg stood petrified, backed against the table. His mother found her feet and yanked her arm from Hunter's grip. Blood smeared her face.

Kevin pawed at the boot holding him down, but Mira shook her head at him, the gun barrel mirroring the action, and he forced himself to lie still, the anger seething inside him.

A squawk and Hunter stepped back to answer the two-way radio at his belt.

His mother grabbed the rifle. Worked the bolt and levelled it at Mira.

Hunter snapped his pistol to her forehead. Murmured into the two-way, 'Gimme a minute.'

Mira chuckled, shook her head ever so slowly. She lifted her foot, just a little, and in that ease of pressure Kevin thought he was free. He began to sit up. Her boot pushed him down again, this time grinding across his throat so hard he choked.

'Don't,' she told him, and her eyes flashed green behind the huge tunnel of the gun barrel.

'Step away,' Kevin's mother told her. 'Let him go.'

'Diana,' Hunter said, his voice so calm he might have been reading the news. 'They get up. Remember? They get up.'

Near Kevin's ear, water dripped from the table to the lino, keeping time wet and slow, slower than the clock on the wall, drip, drip, drip, puddling beside the dead rose on the floor. The smoke alarm kept its own shrill time, barp, barp, barp. In the background burning meat hissed and popped. The harsh stench of it made it even harder to breathe.

Above him, Mira's skirt hung open to reveal her leg above the rim of her knee-high boot, black tights shrink-wrapped around her thigh. It might've been sexy if she hadn't been killing him.

'They get up,' Hunter repeated. He took his pistol away. Put the radio down. Reached for the rifle.

'Who are you people?' Kevin's mother asked, her voice the barest of whispers. She let him take the rifle. She stepped back, shaking, and Meg hugged her, pulling her into a knot of arms and terrified expressions.

The radio squawked again and Hunter swapped the rifle for it. 'Go.'

He then stalked into the kitchen and took the pan off the stove. 'There's company coming.'

'Riders?' Mira asked.

'Probably.'

'How many?'

'Too many, would be my guess. Unless you got something a little extra tucked away under that coat.'

'Then let us see what the newborn knows. Take the women out of the room while I talk to him. Keep them quiet.'

'Mira-'

'I mentioned my sunburn, did I not?'

'Ladies.' He re-slung his radio. 'This way, please.' He motioned with his pistol.

'Don't hurt him,' Kevin's mother pleaded.

'Only a fraction more than he finds pleasurable, I assure you, little mother,' Mira told her. When the women had been shut in the nearest room, Hunter standing watch in the hall, she holstered the gun and hauled Kevin to his feet. He pedalled backward as she bulldozed him into the wall. His vision burst with a new set of flashing lights.

'Kevin?' his mother yelled, and Meg shouted too, a fearful 'Kev!', and Hunter kicked the door.

'He's okay. Just stay where you are.'

Mira held Kevin tightly by the throat, her face next to his. 'I understand you've had an intimate meeting with Taipan. Is that right?'

'What?' he croaked.

'I just need to make a blood test. It will hurt, but I promise you, you will like it.' She bit his neck and he cried out, the sound a strangled, pathetic hiccup under her carpet-snake grip. She sucked on the wound in his throat. The room spun, as though she was the centre of a whirlpool and he was a leaf caught in the swirling current.

'You getting anything?' Hunter asked.

'He's too weak. Barely had enough to get him across the line.'

Hunter sounded resigned when he asked, 'Cut and run, then?'

'Plan B,' she said, her gaze fixed on Kevin as though he was some new kind of bug and she was trying to identify him. 'How far out is that Night Rider?'

He talked into the walkie-talkie. 'A couple of minutes. Taking it real careful, Felicity says.'

'Enough time to put in a trace.'

'They'll find it.'

'Only if they taste him, in which case, they'll finish him off for us. But maybe we'll find out where they are. I don't see a downside.'

Mira pushed Kevin to the floor and pinned his arms with her knees. She was incredibly strong; like an anvil sitting on his chest. 'You like the view, boy?' Her tongue, so pink against her sharp white teeth, her lips glinting. She reached back to his cock and squeezed until he groaned. 'You do like it. Here, taste me.'

She bit her left wrist and he heard the flesh tear, smelled the blood flow, thick and metallic. He turned his mouth away, but she bled on him, splattering his lips, and he tasted her, steaming hot, and he was licking and gulping and trying to lift his head from the floor toward her, and finally she laughed and lowered her wrist till he could suck her down. A voice in the back of his head was screaming NO but the blood drowned it, drowned it completely as what felt like an electric current ran through him. Such delicious electrocution.

'Careful, don't make a mess. We don't want to leave tell-tale stains, do we? Your girlfriend might not like that.'

Romanian, he realised. Her name was Mira and she was Romanian, but that had been a long, long time ago. And the cop - Taipan had been right: he was no cop. Hunter wasn't even his name; it was his rank.

She held up her wrist, marked by two pink scars circling it down low, close to her hand. As he watched, fascinated and horrified, a bright scarlet earthworm burrowed under her skin until it circled her wrist like a bracelet, then solidified into a third ring of weird scar tissue. His eyes must've been playing tricks, because he thought he could see something moving inside the scars, like an eel in a mud puddle. And her eyes - her eyes glazed so deeply red they were almost purple.

'Got you,' she said, and kissed him, lapping at his lips and cheeks. She sat up and closed her eyes as though tuning out to a song only she could hear, and her forehead creased with concentration, little bubbles of rose-coloured sweat glistening. On her blouse, a circle of blood blossomed over her heart, and some kind of pattern grew inside it, rapidly blotching but looking vaguely star-shaped. She smiled at him then, like a prefect who'd just come head of the class, and said, 'But you - you do not have me.' The childish glee vanished. Her eyes snapped to green and then back to deep brown, almost black. Mira gripped his chin, forcing him to look at her. Her fingernails were long, glinting, sharp at the edge of his vision.

'If you tell Taipan what we've just done, you and me, he'll kill you. Do you understand? He will kill you and your mother and your girlfriend. All of you.'

He glared at her, wishing both she and Hunter were dead.

'If he tastes so much as a drop of your blood, you are a dead man. Understand?' She made him nod, his jaw aching from her pincered hold. 'Good boy.' She patted his cheek. 'You play your cards right, we might get to party later. Do you like the sound of that?' She crushed his balls once more, making him sob.

'Time, Mira.' Hunter had moved to the back door where he could look over the rear paddocks.

Mira uncurled, like a cat stretching, rising to her feet in one graceful movement. Kevin half expected her to raise her hands over her head, stand on her toes like a ballet dancer.

'The women?' Hunter asked.

'Let nature take its course,' Mira said. 'A boy has to eat.'

'Shit, Mira.' Hunter turned away as Mira rested the toe of her boot on Kevin's chin, making sure she had his attention.

'You tell your women, Grease Monkey. You make them understand.' She held up a warning finger. 'If one word of this gets out - just one little word - the Night Riders will come for your women. They will kill them all. And if they don't, I will. You want to survive this you keep your mouth shut and your veins to yourself. Verstehen?'

Did he understand? Loud and clear.

The two-way fuzzed. 'One coming in, from the back,' Hunter reported. 'We are out of time.'

'Let's go. Oh, Grease Monkey - we'll be just outside. Watching. Listening.' She held up her finger to her lips, then opened her hand to blow him a kiss.

And then she and Hunter were gone, leaving Kevin with the awareness that he was very lucky to still be alive. They all were. The room smelled of burnt meat but the alarm had quit, sometime. Then, as his mother ran toward him, and Meg stood in the hall with her knuckles to her mouth, he realised he wasn't actually alive at all.

It replays as though he's on a carousel ride:

His mother picking up the rifle and working the bolt - clack, clack, like bony jaws slamming shut - and running to the front door. Meg, there, right there, where only an eye blink ago Mira was crouching, licking his face. Meg, cradling his face and staring into his eyes; asking him if he's all right and what has happened. Her eyes are so very wide and glistening with tears, and the concern he sees there is acid in his heart. He pulls her to him and he bites into her shoulder, that point where her neck joins, and the skin is soft and steaming and opens like freshly baked bread and the rush of blood is simply the most intense - he comes explosively and she groans, her fist beating moth-like against his chest…

Screaming. Stereo, surround sound. It vibrates through him, into his chest, into his blood; his heart races, trying to match that tune. He's screaming, too, down deep where the red flood doesn't reach…

Meg, torn away. Her flesh tears under his teeth. Her shirt rips as he claws to hold her. She sprawls on her arse and screams as she sees her blood for the first time. The scarlet leaches through her ragged T-shirt…

A girl, young, his age maybe, skin the colour of strong coffee, an unnerving glimmer of red in her eyes exactly the same as he saw in Hunter's, reefing him to his feet… He's drunk on his feet and his muscles are dough…

His mother, shouting, crying his name, over and over again, and his arm around the stranger, his feet dragging, and he realises, distantly through the crimson haze, that the girl's a lot stronger than she appears…

From the back door, looking over his shoulder and seeing Meg, horrified and staring as she holds her bloodied hands in front of her, and he's mumbling her name and thinking she won't want to stay with him now. His mother shrieks at him, 'Kevin', a long wailing siren that turns into an animal's anguished howl…

Stumbling across the yard and over the fence and across a paddock that feels as wide as the Simpson fucking desert, and it's hot underfoot, the earth still radiating daytime heat though the sun's well down…

A rubber bat dangling from the rear-vision mirror, and Deep Purple's Black Night blasting the cabin, the girl winking at him, her eyes the colour of red-gold honey in the dashboard glow and he thinks she doesn't look that dangerous…

The girl, asking, 'How are we?' and it takes a moment to realise she isn't talking to him, but a walkie-talkie. 'Lucky,' she says, and Kevin wants to scream 'bullshit', and she says, 'Thanks Hippie, see you back at the ranch', and then tells Kevin it looks as if they've made a clean getaway, but he doesn't feel clean, not at all…

Him asking, pushing the word out through the fog, 'Who…?' She says her name is Kala and tells him that everything is going to be all right and he laughs, a bitter choking sound, and closes his eyes as they speed away into the night because it's easier to swallow lies with your eyes shut…

The ride goes round, and round, and round.